It is clear or should be clear that money does not by itself resolve or avert social conflicts or already entrenched social crises, nor does it alleviate the fear that the insecurity detached from this time. And no matter how many there are, it doesn’t guarantee that a bad management It can become, without major changes, another commendable and politically profitable one.
Sung, the comment fits the Buenos Aires governor’s lap Axel Kicillof, Cristina Kirchner’s favorite economist it’s a privileged of power to which, since 2020, the Casa Rosada has filled with resources for amounts that far exceed those received by any of its peers. All very discretionary by the way.
“We don’t have outbreaks in the places where we have the most difficult situations, because the state’s social assistance arrives through popular organizationsbragged on Monday morning presidential spokeswoman Gabriela Cerruti.
Immersed in a world where it is customary to transform reality into a tailored suit for the Government, Cerruti would hardly have foreseen something that would have happened almost simultaneously with his statements and would have revealed what they already were: simple overestimations.
This is the \It\him murder of bus driver Daniel Barrientos, completely unsecured in the early morning hours of La Matanza, and the outburst of rage and blows against the Buenos Aires minister Sergio Berni who followed him. Everything, harsh chronicle of a social situation impossible to cover up with words or to solve with comfortable plans.
Linked to the story of Cerruti there is another piece of information of a similar kind which also arrives in silver format and is called silver.
It appears on the forms of the same Ministry of Economy and refers to art trillion long pesos that the Government has planned this year the Work Promotion Plans and Food Policies, the most powerful of their kind, managed, as the spokeswoman says, by popular organizations.
Of course, if it is for this reason, it would be more correct to talk about it arid Kirchnerist political organizations and continually warn Where does social assistance really go? state that the spokesman mentions.
Of those trillion pesos that the government has budgeted, some 443,000 million dollars, almost 47%, have been allocated to the province of Buenos Aires. The Autonomous City had 11%; 7.3% in Córdoba and 6.8% in Santa Fe.
In other words, among three large and populous jurisdictions they collect a relatively modest 25.1%, or, if you prefer, they receive 22 percentage points less than in Buenos Aires. Or almost half that of Buenos Aires.
No matter how many beads and crosses are spent, there is no other way to explain those differences other than the distribution method K. That of now and that of Kirchnerism from 2003 to 2015, is worth adding.
The point is that this way of distributing the national funds of the state as if they were its own appears everywhere, in almost identical or slightly different proportions, but always with one big winner.
Whether you look at them from the right or from the back, from back to front or from front to back, the axis that drives the movement never runs.
Thus, in the box corresponding to Buenos Aires we could find, for example, 39% against the 7%, 6 or 5% that there would be in those of Córdoba, the Autonomous City and Santa Fe. Differences in favor of the favorite Kicillof that exist and exceed by five, up to eight times the quotas assigned to governors also elected by the people.
And even when the proportions don’t change, the same inequality measured in absolute values reaches staggering heights when big money is at stake, and it scales to those heights precisely because it’s a huge box.
It is the case this time of the casually named nothing discretionary transfers, that is, resources that the central government administers as it pleases, outside the national budget and according to its interests.
Applied as they are applied, they are an example of how Kirchnerism understands federalism and of the slogan that President Néstor Kirchner proclaimed among his secretaries to the Treasury. He said it or reiterated it money equals power and that a lot of money is a lot of power.
The following is a real package and a real version of Model K, with data calculated based on the average official dollar for each year.
Here, between the beginning of 2020 and the end of 2022, the province of Buenos Aires was privileged with about 7.1 billion dollars. In order of magnitude, Santa Fe and Córdoba each received about $890 million and the city of Buenos Aires $790 million. Almost nothing by itself.
On a grand scale, as it is, it’s called using power at a handle and not getting lost in detours or finesse.
There are other discretionary transfers, only that they go directly from the national treasury to the municipalities, avoiding the governors’ offices. It is a model that Néstor K has installed to negotiate benefits and considerations with mayors without intermediaries.
What does not change but is strengthened is the destination of the funds. According to data for 2022, andl 61% went to the province of Buenos Aires and, more precisely, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The municipalities of the City and those of Santa Fe barely touched 6% each and those of Córdoba had to settle for 4%.
Here he also sends a very electoral-type formula: the bulk of the resources They finance public works, which is to say inaugurations, posters and other operations in the territory where there are votes. The key is the Argentina Hace program of rapid construction by workers from everywhere.
The great promoter of an end-to-end electoral operation is the Minister of Public Works, Gabriel Katopodis. Between presentations, acts, announcements of the most diverse and everything that was at hand, he put together more or less popular meetings on 22 of the 31 days in March and started April with five in a row.
In a broad Front of All plan, the stages were shared, among others, by Alberto Fernández, Máximo Kirchner, by the Minister of Social Development, Victoria Tolosa Paz, by the Ministers of the Interior, Wado de Pedro and of the Economy, Sergio Massa, and of course Axel Kicillof.
It is evident that this deployment can be explained by the political weight of the Province, in the Christian strategy of making itself strong where it concentrates its forces and in the need to feed Kicillof’s electoral chances, about the role that is ultimately assigned.
Kicillof’s problem obviously doesn’t involve money but something that affects him directly: that it is increasingly difficult for him to hide the shortcomings of his management.
Some of them: the unabated progress of insecurity, followed by the fear and weariness of the people of Buenos Aires; the basic infrastructure absent and conspicuously absent in the disadvantaged neighborhoods which are, moreover, the most populated; The 40% of illegal employment that speaks of economic management and the point that closes the table: the poverty of 45% in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, including the 740,000 new poor who have entered since he took office.
It is evident that the governor has no shortage of money, as evidenced by the fact that this year current fiscal spending will grow by 124%, likely above inflationaccording to the 2023 Budget. Or that the workforce adds 25,460 agents at the same time as they were in 2022.
The question is about what and how the resources of the provincial state are spent, which is undoubtedly, as Kirchnerism says: a present state.
Source: Clarin
